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dunhill sees a 62% increase in average visit value using Nosto to drive sales for their new capsule collection

About dunhill

A design driven brand, with style, substance and purpose; engineering unique luxuries for men. Founded in 1893 when Alfred Dunhill took over his father’s harness manufacturing business, Alfred developed and invented products for the emerging motoring industry to meet the needs of a new generation.

Today, dunhill is a leading British luxury menswear brand with a global retail and digital presence, led by the vision of Creative Director, Mark Weston and CEO, Andrew Maag.

Leather and craftsmanship is as integral today, as it was 125 years ago. In the leather workshops in London’s Walthamstow and in Italy, dunhill upholds the tradition of considered craft. The business continues to be driven forward by the founder’s long-established mantra: “It must be useful, it must work dependably, it must be beautiful, it must last, it must be the best of its kind”.

Challenge

The Aquarium capsule collection, although inspired by one of dunhill’s iconic table lighters, is a contemporary take on the design. Its bold illustrations and colours needed to be handled and curated differently and sensitively for different dunhill customer types.

The approach: Strongly promote the full capsule to customers it would most appeal to, while delivering a more classic content experience to more ‘traditional’ customers.

Solution

In May 2019, dunhill successfully used Nosto’s AI powered personalisation – including its innovative Segmentation and Insights and Content Personalization technology – to support the launch of its new Aquarium collection.

Creating awareness pre-Aquarium launch with segmentation

During pre-launch, Nosto helped dunhill create distinct customer segments aimed at targeting each customer with a unique experience upon visiting the website.

Nosto’s technology creates segments fuelled by a combination of transactional data and rich behavioural data profiles. These segments can be based on a number of affinities – including customer lifecycle stage, top selling locations, top selling categories and device types.

In the case of dunhill, four customer segments were identified:

  1. VIC segment: People who were already established dunhill customers
  2. ‘Traditional’ segment: Customers whose online behavior indicated lower potential affinity with Aquarium.
  3. ‘Early access’ segment: Customers who signed up for exclusive early access to Aquarium via a pop-up on the website
  4. All other customers

Segmentation and Insights were used to create the VIC segment of customers likely to have a strong affinity with the new contemporary Aquarium capsule. It also allowed dunhill to identify the Traditional segment – those less likely to be interested in Aquarium who would be targeted with content featuring more classic wardrobe styles.

A personalised countdown timer was placed on the homepage, counting the days, minutes and seconds until Aquarium launched. Visitors within the VIC segment and those who had signed up for exclusive early access were automatically identified and shown a deadline reduced by 24 hours.

 

Aquarium branding was also reinforced for VIC customers: On specific category pages, this segment was shown a video of a dancing model wearing the new collection.

 

 

In addition, an ‘Exclusive’ category was automatically injected into the site navigation shown to VIC visitors and those who had signed up for exclusive access.

Segmenting customers post-launch

dunhill’s homepage delivered two distinct shopping experiences:

  1. The Traditional segment was fuelled by content related more to the categories these shoppers have historically browsed. Aquarium was still promoted, but in a more subtle way with a hero banner featuring Aquarium, followed by the ‘Leather Edit’ and new arrivals.
  2. Everyone else was shown an ‘Aquarium Takeover’ homepage which heavily featured Aquarium content: bright colours and bold prints with a ‘shop now’ banner CTA.

Underneath that, visitors were shown Nosto’s personalised recommendations which led them directly to Aquarium product pages. On category pages, the Aquarium ‘dancing model’ was shown to all customers except those in the Traditional segment. The ‘Exclusive’ category within the navigation was replaced with ‘Aquarium’ (shown to all except Traditional customers).

 

 

Results

Together, dunhill and Nosto have driven a significant uplift in ecommerce performance by creating distinct customer segments, targeting shoppers with fully personalised online experiences. dunhill’s personalisation strategy has resulted in:

  • a 62% increase in average visit value
  • a 31% in online conversion rate
  • a 15% increase in average order value
Results figure

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